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YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day

Clemency Burton-Hill

I'm Sorry, I Love You: A History of Professional Wrestling

Jim Smallman

How to Live Plastic Free

Luca Bonaccorsi

Authors:

Luca Bonaccorsi

Thank you for choosing this book - it shows that you care about the future of our planet.Whether you decide to go plastic free for an hour, a day or a year, this book will equip you with little steps we can each take to make a big difference.Let's turn the tide on plastic now - our oceans will thank you for it.Choking. Starving. Poisoning. This is what plastic litter is doing to marine life. Our oceans are, quite simply, facing environmental disaster. Yet by taking some simple steps and making a few changes to your daily routine, YOU can help to change this.How to Live Plastic Free will teach you everything you need to know about reducing your plastic usage on a daily basis. The chapters start with a typical morning routine and take you through your day, giving you tips and practical advice for removing unnecessary plastic at every possible opportunity.From the moment you wake up to the time you go to bed, you will learn how easy it can be to use plastic-free cosmetics, how to have plastic-free mealtimes, how to change your shopping habits and how to consider your use of plastic items at work. These simple, practical methods will show that small changes to your lifestyle can make a huge change to the future of our planet.#StopThePlasticTide

Six Tudor Queens: Anne Boleyn, A King's Obsession

Alison Weir

Authors:

Alison Weir

*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession by bestselling historian Alison Weir, author of Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen, is the second captivating novel in the Six Tudor Queens series. An unforgettable portrait of the ambitious woman whose fate we know all too well, but whose true motivations may surprise you. Essential reading for fans of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick.'A triumph of fine detail and research and offers a complex depiction of an endlessly fascinating woman' Elizabeth Fremantle'Anne Boleyn as you have never seen her before. I could not put it down' Tracy Borman'Alison Weir makes history come alive as no one else' Barbara ErskineThe young woman who changed the course of history.Fresh from the palaces of Burgundy and France, Anne draws attention at the English court, embracing the play of courtly love.But when the King commands, nothing is ever a game.Anne has a spirit worthy of a crown - and the crown is what she seeks. At any price. ANNE BOLEYN. The second of Henry's Queens. Her story. History tells us why she died. This powerful novel shows her as she lived.SIX TUDOR QUEENS. SIX NOVELS. SIX YEARS.The third novel in Alison Weir's spellbinding Six Tudor Queens series: Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen - coming May 2018Praise for Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession:'Alison Weir has brought English history's most famous 'other woman' compellingly to life' Linda Porter'Detailed, immaculately researched and convincing' The Times'Weir's outstanding and sound historical research shines through, shedding new light on England's most controversial queen' Nicola Tallis

Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen

Alison Weir

Authors:

Alison Weir

*A Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller*Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen by bestselling historian Alison Weir, author of The Lost Tudor Princess, is the first in a spellbinding six novel series about Henry VIII's Queens. Alison takes you on an engrossing journey at Katherine's side and shows her extraordinary strength of character and intelligence. Ideal for fans of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick. 'Shatters the many myths about Henry VIII's long-suffering first wife' Tracy Borman'Weir is excellent on the little details that bring a world to life' GuardianA Spanish princess. Raised to be modest, obedient and devout. Destined to be an English Queen.Six weeks from home across treacherous seas, everything is different: the language, the food, the weather. And for her there is no comfort in any of it. At sixteen-years-old, Catalina is alone among strangers.She misses her mother. She mourns her lost brother.She cannot trust even those assigned to her protection.KATHERINE OF ARAGON. The first of Henry's Queens. Her story.History tells us how she died. This captivating novel shows us how she lived.SIX TUDOR QUEENS. SIX NOVELS. SIX YEARS.Praise for Alison Weir and Katherine of Aragon: 'A tender understanding of and genuine sympathy for this proud, much-loved and honourable Queen. . . I was gripped [from] start to finish' Mavis Cheek'Well-researched and engrossing' Good Housekeeping'Yet again, Alison Weir has managed to intertwine profound historical knowledge with huge emotional intelligence, to compose a work that throws light on an endlessly fascinating historical figure. Yet her real gift in all of this is making it feel so fresh and alive' Earl Spencer'This exquisite book charts the rise and fall of Henry VIII's first wife, Katherine. . . A fascinating insight into this period of our history. Weir's undeniable strength is her immaculate description, enabling the reader to be transported back to Tudor England' Sun'Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen is a true tour de force. Finely crafted, this novel is wonderful historical fiction and an outstanding introduction to the Six Tudor Queens series' Queen Anne Boleyn Blog'Known for bestselling historical biographies, Alison Weir is in command of her detail . . . her handling of Katherine's misery and dignified response to her predicament is very touching' Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail

Hotel Chocolat: A New Way of Cooking with Chocolate

A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey (companion to series 5)

Jessica Fellowes

All The Things You Are

Clemency Burton-Hill

Authors:

Clemency Burton-Hill

In the bestselling tradition of Douglas Kennedy. A rich, tense and absorbing novel of a woman's journey to Jerusalem from Manhattan to follow her heart, no matter what the cost. When New York journalist Natasha Bernstein loses her job and discovers her fiancé has been keeping a dark secret, her world collapses. Turning to her family, she takes inspiration from her formidable grandmother Esther, who runs a community centre in downtown Manhattan. As she starts to rebuild her life, Natasha's friendship with Rafi - the enigmatic architect working on Esther's centre - restores her sense of wonder at the world and her faith in who she is. But when Rafi and Natasha take a trip to Jerusalem, they are plunged into a story far deeper than their own. Here, questions of family and loyalty mean more than life itself, and they must ask themselves what they are ultimately prepared to fight for. In a divided world, is it history or love that makes us who we are?

The Best of Times

Penny Vincenzi

Taste Ye Back

Sue Lawrence

Authors:

Sue Lawrence

This is a gem of a book. Sue Lawrence has interviewed 70 prominent Scots and unlocked their beloved memories of food and what it was like for them growing up. She talks to them about their families, their home and their relationship with food. Most of the childhoods of the twentieth century are represented here, and include celebrities as diverse as Ewan McGregor, Gordon Brown, Hardeep Singh Koli, AL Kennedy, Andy Murray, Sharleen Spiteri and Gordon Ramsay. They reminisce about their mum's cullen skink, their dad's roast and their granny's shortbread which Sue tests out and brings right up to date as only Sue can. With a mellow nostalgic tone running through the interviews and recipes, you can't help but be inspired to make it how it used to be made.

If Not Now, When?

Esther Rantzen

Almost A Crime

Penny Vincenzi

A New Way of Cooking with Chocolate

Chocolate is one of our most popular ingredients - both to eat and to cook with. But how many of us know how truly versatile it is? Hotel Chocolat, the UK's leading chocolatier, has pioneered 'cocoa cuisine': a new way of cooking with chocolate because, athough we know chocolate as a sweet ingredient, cocoa was originally used in savoury recipes. In fact, cocoa is a 'super-ingredient' with many layers of flavour and plenty of goodness too, and and this book showcases its many flavours and nuances with over 100 innovative chocolate recipes, both sweet and savoury.
Hotel Chocolat has created energy-boosting recipes for breakfast, savoury recipes that enhance meat and fish dishes as well as give texture and depth to salads and snacks. And of course, not forgetting the hedonistic qualities that we love so much - with seductive bakes and puddings for all tastes.
Find out too how to use the whole bean, from the shell to the nibs, cocoa powder to bar. And how to roast your own beans and even create a bar of your own. Uniquely, each recipe has a Cocoa Factor to indicate the depth of flavour as well as the cocoa percentage and region that will best suit the dish. Angus Thirlwell, Hotel Chocolat's visionary founder, will also take you through the story of chocolate from pod to plate.
Welcome to cocoa cuisine!

Hotel Chocolat

Chocolate is one of our most popular ingredients - both to eat and to cook with. But how many of us know how truly versatile it is? Hotel Chocolat, the UK's leading chocolatier, has pioneered 'cocoa cuisine': a new way of cooking with chocolate because, athough we know chocolate as a sweet ingredient, cocoa was originally used in savoury recipes. In fact, cocoa is a 'super-ingredient' with many layers of flavour and plenty of goodness too, and and this book showcases its many flavours and nuances with over 100 innovative chocolate recipes, both sweet and savoury.
Hotel Chocolat has created energy-boosting recipes for breakfast, savoury recipes that enhance meat and fish dishes as well as give texture and depth to salads and snacks. And of course, not forgetting the hedonistic qualities that we love so much - with seductive bakes and puddings for all tastes.
Find out too how to use the whole bean, from the shell to the nibs, cocoa powder to bar. And how to roast your own beans and even create a bar of your own. Uniquely, each recipe has a Cocoa Factor to indicate the depth of flavour as well as the cocoa percentage and region that will best suit the dish. Angus Thirlwell, Hotel Chocolat's visionary founder, will also take you through the story of chocolate from pod to plate.
Welcome to cocoa cuisine!

Hotel Chocolat

Blog: A Wild (and really rather cultural) Weekend in the West Country...

Port Eliot Festival: part literary celebration, part musical extravaganza and part enchanted garden of weird and wonderful delights. Note to user: this is not your average book event.
My mum and I travelled down on the Friday morning, and it was as though we were driving into summer: the weekend proved to be the one where the jet stream got its act together and the sun arrived for the first time in weeks. We were spoilt, too, with our camping pitch: a golden hay-bale strewn slope, with an incredible view down into the valley where the festivities were taking place, and to the river where we would go wild swimming (!) the next day. The only bum note in this idyllic scene was the squealing of some small animal being murdered in the hedgerow behind us as we were trying to construct our tent (nature red in tooth and claw etc... a note to us Londoners that we were definitely not in a Royal Park).
It's hard to pick a high note of the festival, one that really represented the whole Port Eliot experience, because there were so many of them, and because the festival is so much the sum of its many, fabulous parts. Was it Hannah Rothschild talking (with Virago’s founder, Rosie Boycott) about her wild great aunt, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who left her husband and five children to run away with jazz legend Thelonious Monk? Or the inimitable Michèle Roberts (who announced that she was delighted to see that there were ‘at least six sexes present’ at the festival) remembering Angela Carter with DoveGreyReader's Lynne Hatwell in her quilt-strewn treasure box of a tent?
One day’s activities should give an indication of the brilliant and occasionally hilarious variety of entertainment on offer. In just a few hours we moved from a 'fashion dolls teaparty’ comprising arrangements of couture-clad barbies from designers such as Sarah Burton and Christopher Kane, to a hysterical singing lesson by conductor Charles Hazlewood in the Idler Academy's tent, on to a goosepimpling reading by Robert McFarlane from his new book, The Old Ways, accompanied by the haunting sounds of Chris Watson's ‘nature disco’. Oh, and there was that dip in the river, too – which left us refreshed, euphoric, and possibly pre-hypothermic. And some prosecco drinking. Two huge plates of fish and chips. Then some fairly energetic dancing to Manière des Bohémiens frantic fiddles, the Bhangra band RSVP and the folky, toe-tapping, subtly subversive sound of Australian band FLAP!. I was the one who called time on the evening at 2.30am – my mum would quite happily have gone on dancing until dawn. I had to make up something about having had ‘a tiring week’... some work clearly required on my festival stamina!
We left Port Eliot deliriously happy, slightly sunburnt, and already raring to return. My only concern about going next time (which we will) is that old edict about not improving on perfection. Because it was, quite simply, perfect.

THE HEIST

Alison Weir

Alison Weir is the top-selling female historian (and the fifth-bestselling historian overall) in the United Kingdom, and has sold over 2.7 million books worldwide. She has published eighteen history books, including her most recent non-fiction book, Queens of the Conquest, the first in her England's Medieval Queens quartet. Alison has also published several historical novels, including Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth. Anna of Kleve: Queen of Secrets is Alison Weir's ninth published novel and the fourth in the Six Tudor Queens series about the wives of Henry VIII, which was launched in 2016 to great critical acclaim. The first three books in the series - Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen, Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession and Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen were all Sunday Times bestsellers. Alison is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary life patron of Historic Royal Palaces.

New York, New York

Being a freelance writer has its upsides and its down; but an indisputable up is the ability to choose one’s office daily. As I write, I am sitting in a small café on Hudson and Charles, spotted on a whim as I crossed over the street from Seventh Avenue. It boasts walls of exposed old brick and studiedly shabby wooden furniture; a vinyl record of jazz turns on a gramophone in the corner. October sunlight slants lazily across the street and slinks in through the café windows, gilding a wall of analogue photographs depicting the proprietor’s great-grandparents in curling sepia. It is late 2012; the New York headquarters of some of the twenty-first-century’s most cutting-edge technology companies are in the vicinity; but with this chipped mug of coffee in my hands here and that Charlie Parker LP spinning there, I could be occupying the sort of contemplative corner spot that any number of human characters in New York may have occupied before me. Other years, other faces, other times.
People sometimes complain that Greenwich Village, like much in Manhattan, has “altered beyond recognition” and I’m sure in many ways it has – it is in the very nature of this town; the very name of this town, to enshrine the possibility of change. But I also know, I feel intuitively, that there is still in these streets the unwavering spirit of the old city, catering generously and eternally to the needs of those whose hearts are open, curious and yearning. There’s no place like this on earth.
In other words, New York’s still got it.
****
When I turned eighteen, I was given a subscription to the New Yorker for my birthday. A decade later, almost to the day, I moved to Manhattan and for the first few months I lived here, the simplest and most wondrous of the inestimable gifts this city bestows seemed to be this: that I could open those storied pages, flip to Goings On About Town, and, if I so desired, “go on about town”. I could read about a jazz gig, a book reading, a film opening, a symphony or rock concert, an opera, a play, a new restaurant and, bank balance permitting, experience it that same night. Back in my hometown of London – itself a city not without wonder – reading the Goings On section of the New Yorker became a weekly act of masochism, yielding predictable twists of almost palpable longing. To read about what was happening that same night across the Atlantic; to dream, to imagine, but to only be able to imagine – to not be in New York was sometimes too much to bear.
Yet this is a city that has always been created by the imagination; a metropolis lovingly constructed in ink and paper and celluloid and dreams as much as it is by bricks and mortar, steel and glass. To borrow an insight from that master observer of New York, E. B. White, there are roughly three New Yorks: that of the natives, that of the commuters, and that of the settlers. That notion was true when White wrote “Here is New York” in 1948, and it strikes me as being resoundingly true today. Like him, I believe that the third New York will always be the most important, the most vital, because it is the one whose foundations are laid first in the minds of human beings born and living elsewhere – those for whom New York City is the ultimate destination. When the settler-dreamers hit the bedrock, having crossed bodies of water, been coughed up through tubes or tunnels or deposited by planes, it is up to them – to us – to turn those dreams into something resembling reality. And because New York has a unique capacity to absorb whatever is thrown at it and whomever arrives on its shores, they invariably do play their own unique part in shaping what happens next in the mighty pageant that is life here.
Although, not always: New York also spits out more dejected and disappointed souls than any other city on earth. We transplanted “New Yorkers” must also live with the lurking shadow of that possibility every day.
****
The music fades, the needle lifts, and a bearded barista with complicated tattoos on his forearms whom I’d wager lives in Brooklyn goes to flip the record to its B-Side. Which reminds me of a startling fact: the first jazz disc ever to be cut in the world was cut in New York. Ever in the world! It was Nick La Rocca’s Original Dixieland Jazz Band with “Livery Stable Blues”, in early 1917. But I plucked that particular “first” from the sky; really it’s not so startling – New York is a city of firsts. A city of human beings calmly doing things that will forever alter the direction of how those things can be done. From sculptors to subway contractors; from traders of sundries to traders of derivatives; from writers of music to writers of insurance to writers of code. Right now, I wonder, how many blocks am I from wonder? A short stroll in any direction and I might run into a movie crew shooting on a corner of Bleecker whose young director, as yet unknown, will win an Oscar next year; I might walk past an innocuous office building on Houston in which employees at a start-up whose name we’ve never heard of are busy inventing the next game-changing technology that we will soon all take for granted; I may glance at construction workers on a downtown skyscraper site whose silhouette will one day be a byword, a metaphor, a symbol for something the whole world understands – or maybe will just be a building so beautiful it makes people weep. This guy sitting next to me, meanwhile, tapping away on his laptop; for all I know he could be writing the world’s next Booker-winning novel. This is New York.
Since arriving at this café, moreover, I have seen through these sunlit windows every sort of human face pass along Hudson Street. Even here, in this achingly well-heeled neighborhood where a brownstone townhouse around the corner on Perry is apparently on the market at fifteen million dollars (“What the hell – I’ll take two!”) I have seen faces old and young; faces black and brown and pink and white and many shades of grey. Faces beautiful and completely unmemorable; faces brimful of life; faces seemingly close to death. Perhaps these faces come from Puerto Rico, from Sierra Leone, from Mexico, England, Haiti, Cuba, Latvia, Kenya, Russia, Ireland or Italy. Perhaps from China, Tunisia, Wales, India, Jamaica, New Zealand, Greece or Poland. Perhaps they were born in a gleaming hospital uptown, or in a railroad apartment in an outer borough; perhaps they were born half way around the world. But here in New York they are. And as White memorably observed: “the collision and the intermingling of these millions of foreign-born people representing so many races and creeds make New York a permanent exhibit of the phenomenon of one world.”
The phenomenon of one world. We know all this, of course. New York as a racial melting pot, a magnet for all comers, a global crucible of creativity: all of this has been said in myriad ways, by multitudes and over many years. But just as New York has every type of potential racial problem and for the most part enjoys a continuing and frankly miraculous city-wide tolerance, an “inviolate truce” between peoples, what astounds me is how the things we know about the city – the clichés and stereotypes, the myths and legends – go on being true, and indeed, get truer. Why? How? How do you work, New York? How are you even plausible?
****
When you tell people you live in New York, I have found, reactions generally divide into those whose eyes widen with envy and those who wrinkle their brows in horror – or, worse, pity. “Oh no,” they shake their head, “I could never live there – so noisy, so dirty, so smelly. And why does everyone have to be so unbelievably rude?” There are also those who grumble that New York has somehow lost its character; been homogenised and commercialised and overrun by identical shops, adverts and tourists who genuinely appear to think queuing outside Abercrombie & Fitch a valid use of time. Well, yes. Surely Broadway has its grim bits; clearly one does well to avoid Times Square. Obviously you ignore the horse-and-cart guys in Central Park and of course you don’t eat at Olive Garden or wait forty-five minutes for a Magnolia Bakery cupcake. And of course New York is smelly and dirty and busy and crowded. If White thought in 1948 that “the normal frustrations of modern life are here multiplied and amplified” he would possibly be dismayed (but not surprised) to discover that more than half a century on there is still “not enough air and not enough light, and there is usually either too much heat or too little”.
But in general, I believe, New York still has more life and curiosity and character in a single city block than even – dare I say it – London. And I’m a born and bred London girl who once suspected that if you were to cut my veins I would bleed the Thames. (I have also lived in Paris, and - hit me over the head with a baguette – I’m afraid that glorious capital does not compare either.) For more than three years, for example, my local Subway stop has been Grand Central. Rushing across the Main Concourse before I head underground to catch a train, I try always to look up at the ceiling and promise myself I will never, ever take such a sight for granted. When back in London, equally, I remind myself not to sigh in inevitable disappointment when I board the Piccadilly Line to go home. It’s a grossly unfair comparison, of course: how could poor old Hammersmith, my local Tube, ever hope to win against those majestic cathedral glories on 42nd Street?
But that’s the point, isn’t it?
****
In January 2012, the population of the entire New York City metropolitan area hit nineteen million people. It can be lonely here; sometimes unutterably so: a teeming place of human isolation and even desperation. By Grand Central Station I have indeed sat down and wept. But as White also captured brilliantly: “Although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness… you always feel that either by shifting your location ten blocks or by reducing your fortune by five dollars you can experience rejuvenation.”
Reducing one’s fortune by five dollars here, by the way, remains the easiest damn thing in the world. Another cup of coffee at this very café, especially if accompanied by one of those artisanal sea-salt cookies they bake downstairs, will barely leave me change from twice that. In a doorway down the street, some wit has stuck a poster referencing the iconic slogan: I CAN’T AFFORD TO  NY. It has probably never been more difficult or more expensive to live in New York. Yet I and so many others would not be anywhere else in the world. Shifting my location, I will take my five bucks and get another coffee at some other place, ten blocks away, twenty, or who knows where. It doesn’t matter where I go: I open the door and the universe awaits.
CLEMENCY BURTON-HIL, NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 2012